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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25598524">Returning, Leaving, Arriving</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/wormwood700/pseuds/wormwood700'>wormwood700</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 06:07:04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>510</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25598524</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/wormwood700/pseuds/wormwood700</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>A series of (short) stories about Boromir who returns to Gondor, but discovers that the man who came back is not the man who left. Sometimes you have to retrace your steps to unite the two.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Returning, Leaving, Arriving</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>Returning </strong>
</p><p>When he came back to the City they welcomed him. They gave him their love and he returned it.</p><p>There was always a space however, between him and those he touched, between him and the City. Its beauty somehow always out of reach, stolen from between his fingers.</p><p>Nobody understood at first when he said he needed to leave for a while. Faces went pale with anger and hurt, but he got their acceptance in the end, if not their understanding.</p><p>He left one day at dawn. Boromir knew he needed to spend some time alone - with that man who came back.</p><p> </p><p>
  <strong>On the Talan </strong>
</p><p>A carved border ran gracefully along the edge of the talan, and on it stood a tall cup, filled with rainwater and tree-shadow.</p><p>Like the talan the cup was simple, but exquisitely made. It moulded perfectly to Boromir's hand, as if it had been left there for him. But that made no sense at all…</p><p>The rainwater tasted of mallorn. A ghost of a taste, a faint echo of a living thing.</p><p>He would rest here, and this time that soft probing voice wouldn't enter. She had left, the Lady of the Wood.</p><p> </p><p>
  <strong>At Caras Caladhon</strong>
</p><p>Boromir entered the open gates and walked into the not unwelcoming emptiness, teeming with life that had been.</p><p>He stopped at the foot of the great mallorn and looked up at the outline of her dwelling, where she had stripped him bare with her gaze, making his defences slip, leaving him feeling belittled and humiliated.</p><p>Now, in its decline, he saw the true beauty of her forest, in a way he was unable to then. And that mournful insight was perhaps, paradoxically, a gift.</p><p>Boromir pulled his cloak around him and turned to leave. He hoped she'd found peace, wherever she was.</p><p> </p><p>
  <strong>Like an Emerald Ghost</strong>
</p><p>Boromir sat close to his fire by the Anduin when the wind rushed out of the trees like an emerald ghost.</p><p>It bit his neck, tugged at his hair and hammered its fists into the small of his back; tore at the corners of his tightly wound cloak, making them flap like wings of caged birds.</p><p>It dived into the fire, scooped up handfuls of ash and flame and flung them across the river in a shower of sparks.</p><p>Finally, the wind ceased, its rage spent.</p><p>It snuggled up to Boromir, brushed a kiss across his weather-beaten face and withdrew.</p><p> </p><p>
  <strong>November Sun</strong>
</p><p>A low sun has uncoiled his shadow into a long ribbon along the ground. He feels the pull of it.</p><p>He left to spend time alone with that stranger who came back, attempt to fill the space between him and the world. And now he’s again in the midst of things. Perhaps he on the talan looked into a rainwater-fragment of her mirror; was healed by the touch of the unravelling and unpredictable elemental world she left behind. A touch as merciless as her unpeeling gaze once had been.</p><p>Boromir raises an imaginary glass in the direction of the sea.</p>
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